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7:4- Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes as the pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.

The twin towers of your beauty was all a bit epic for me.

Neither Lord of the Rings nor 9/11 your eyes fit to drown in.

Looking down that road to Damascus but without hope of vision.

You stood architecturally significant but wounded by hyperbole.

The thee and thy and thine of the King James version hung around your neck

like pearl anachronisms and the Lebanon you knew ruby-ed with blood, stifled me.

All I could see was the cruelty involved in a tower of ivory and to find that beautiful

Appals me and Heshbon’s pools were famous for fish, I could never abide that smell.

One of the pools still survives ‘google’ tells me, so it must be true,

It holds no water though, after earthquakes and like accusations,

Like any love I had for you, it has become secular, no longer sacred

And when I view your architecture in the pornography you made of us

I find it hard to believe in anything that involves myth and magic.

Love in ruins and all those words translated as a canticle of loss.

That I no longer sing or care for, faded splendour, as if you give a toss.

MATTERS OF LIFE & DEATH: FIVE HAIKU

Mary Folliet

The Ghosts of Utopia

~for Tom Stoppard~

“The theatre is a weapon at least as powerful as any bullet.” —Clifford Odets

fate invents love’s wit

real travesties teach play

rock on night & day

Reaching Majorit

~for JP~

twenty-one is fun

but the best is yet to come

don’t forget ever!

Ferris Wheel

“on top of the world, or in the depths of despair” —Goethe

round & round we go

nowhere yet still ever on

staking sky to ground

Life’s Health Club

work hard or work out

fit, fat, fixed, shrunk or bedrid

all paths lead to dead

Progress

or

Moving Toward the Exit

“The ground itself is kind, black butter” —Seamus Heaney

from blog to bog man

a matter of minute beats

hearts & flowers too

THE GIFT SHOP OFF THE MULTIVERSE

Ian Hunter

She didn’t get it?

Let me check my records

You never ordered it

You changed your mind

You only paid the deposit

She moved away

She’s dead, sorry

It came back unopened

They’ve stopped making them

They were recalled because of a problem

There is no such gift

You don’t know her

You never met

She doesn’t exist

And neither do you

MY HAPPINESS IS PAST ITS

SELL BY DATE

Ian Hunter

Happiness used to be just that

Then they did what they did

With Marathon Bars (now Snickers)

And Opal fruits (now Starburst)

Happiness became Cheerfulness

Re-named

Re-branded

Re-packaged

Soon it disappeared from the shelves

Only available from specialist shops

then not at all

as EC directives were implemented

concerned about the effects

flavours, colours and additives

might have on

your mind

your heart

your soul

I kept a little bit of happiness

in the freezer

wrapped in cling film

but it was there too long

chipped out of shape

trying top get the polythene off

its flavour gone

History Lessons for the Future

John Calder

There was once a welfare state.

It was long awaited

and many people hated

it, because their taxes paid for it

and it was daily baited

by the press and by the rich

and by the playwrights of the day

who said the rich could not afford

a stitch of pleasure or to go away

on holiday and therefore they were poor and bored.

And those poor proles who had some brains

passed exams, were educated

by the state at its expense

and sometimes to their betters mated

and some began to paint and write

about themselves in novels, plays,

write music, and in other ways

prove that proles were not all dumb.

Somerset Maugham, who in earlier days

bestsellers wrote, he called them ‘scum’.

But some with families found the state

welfare generous, gave up work

and just sat drinking with a mate,

while others, wiser, did not shirk

their work, knowing that their fate

could change and easy times not last

beyond the Tories coming back

with Thatcherism rising fast

and those with mortgages were longing

to be bourgeois and so belonging

to the middle class at last,

forgetting all their labour past.

Now asset-stripping killed the small

companies where work was fine

and pleasant. They all went to the wall

and global business came to mine

the riches of the welfare state

that once belonged to all, but now

all privatised: such was our fate

as greed and avarice conquered all

and fashion was the sole concern

of media interest short and tall

for those with money still to burn.

But every bubble has to burst.

It has! We know not yet the worst.

The banks are bust, the homes are going.

We’re reaping all of Thatcher’s sowing.

But not just her! New Labour’s game

Is Tory under another name.

What should we do, but nationalise

all that we owned when we were wise?

Above all, we should socialise

the things we need to civilise:

Our greatest needs. Clement Attlee did it.

The Right could not his will inhibit

while Maggie could not recognise

that such a thing as society exists,

pounding it with iron fists.

And then comes Blair in a similar gaffe-

‘You cannot stop the globalisation of the world.’

How naff!

So now the bad old times are back,

the thirties here again, a new depression

bringing dole queues, panic, fear

and miseries in quick succession.

If now we want a better fate

we must go back to educate

an honest and a competent

elite to run a world that’s rent

in pieces by incompetence and greed

until private enterprise again is small,

knows what it does, is less likely to fall,

and elect those with honest brains,

looking again to Marx and Keynes

and care for equal shares and culture

and getting rid of the capitalist vulture.

Art & Artist: Antonakis Christodoulou

Deporting the myths — “Deportation to me is when someone abandons their ordinariness mentally or by force,” K.V. said when I talked to him about the images that were created in my mind every time I listened to his musical piece of the same title. I imagined human figures hovering over the ground, in a city where a war had just ended. These men, perhaps dead, perhaps alive, could be easily transported wherever they wanted. I was among them. I didn’t want to go somewhere in particular, I wanted to pass from all the places I loved since I could. Then, I met this Centaur outside Selfridges. It could be a scene from a David Lynch film, he wore a sweater from Gap and he was Japanese.

The Centaurs, according to Greek mythology chose to be exiled to Arcadia after they had been defeated in a battle. My Centaur is definitely their descendant. We don’t know where he was before or where he’s going next. We don’t even know if he really exists. If we decide that he does exist, we have to prove it too. The Greek mythological system gives a clear description. In the Postmodern age representation precedes and defines the real according to Baudrillard. The ancient Greeks needed to believe in the existence of myths they themselves had created. Today the mediation of software results in the depiction of these myths. My Centaur travels with me to London, mingles with the crowd in a city centre and someone can see him only when he really wants to believe in his existence.

He seems to be perfectly integrated in his new environment, as if he was there forever. He could have been there forever without anyone having noticed him. What is different is not always visible and everyone perceives it differently. Besides, who defines what is normal and what is usual? What is representation and what reality? Perhaps the whole world which we inhabit is the representation of another. Carrey represents with engravings the Parthenon’s pediments. Nobody can really know what they actually looked like, however there can be infinite ways to represent them.

If the only choice is representation, then this is also the only truth. We have the privilege of multiple versions but also the danger of exaggeration. A Centaur walked along Oxford Street, met a Siren in Trafalgar Square and then took the tube. At Holborn station he saw the Minotaur going up the escalators. When the night fell, he found himself in Soho, along with Pan meandering among tourists.